UBC fell prey to an online e-mail scam last December.

Recipients of the e-mail, who were faculty and staff of the university, were asked for their passwords.

When someone attempts to acquire usernames, passwords and other sensitive information by pretending to be a trustworthy party, it is called “phishing.” Larry Carson, Associate Director of UBC’s Information Security Management, said that in today’s technologically advanced world, this trend will continue to grow.

“As [technology] changes, we’re going to keep seeing issues like this. What we’re going to see for the future is more. That’s just the reality of it…”

Carson said that there are ways to remain on guard against phishing. “IT people never ask for your passwords…it’s just too big of a request to ask that.”

There was only a “small number” of people affected, two of them being students, and UBC responded quickly to the scam.

“We took steps to protect the community by blocking the phishing messages, blocking the attacker from accessing the campus and informing the community through a broadcast e-mail,” said Oliver Gruter-Andrew, UBC’s Chief Information Officer.

UBC’s IT department feel that phishing scammers’ focus has shifting to educational institutions.

“For years phishing has been primarily targeted at banking institutions, and now there is attention being focused on educational institutes worldwide,” said Gruter-Andrew.

Four ways you can prevent yourself from an IT scam

1. Take Phishing quizzes online, which helps users identify phishing scams. Sonicwall is one of these.

2. Don’t give out your password. “IT staff never request passwords, period,” said Carson.

3. Check who the message is coming from. “Quite often, it’s not an e-mail address that looks like something it should like,” Carson said. “That’s commonly what you’ll see: some other organization has a compromised computer that is being used to send messages on their behalf.”

4. Use your instincts. “If something seems wrong…contact IT staff.”

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